A short, sweet, inspirational work for Christian readers.
Colbert tells of how God helped him survive a lifetime of close calls in this spiritual debut memoir.
In 1960, at the age of 8, the author was hit by a car as he ran across Baltimore’s 25th Street, but he survived after three surgeries. When he was a teenager, one of his friends fired a handgun at him from a distance of 50 feet, but the bullet miraculously hit a nearby clothesline pole instead. When the diabetic author was in his 60s, he was rushed to the hospital with a near-fatal blood-sugar level, but he was released only 11 days later. All in all, Colbert says that he’s survived 12 different brushes with death. He pulled through, time and again, he says, “primarily because of the Love, Grace, Mercy, Power and Providence of all mighty God.” In this book, he details his various trials and tribulations, from alcoholism and heroin addiction to clinical depression and an enlarged prostate; in each case, he writes about how his religious beliefs sustained him and delivered him to safety. He also details the many blessings in his life, which he says illustrates God’s love for the faithful. Overall, the author writes in an enthusiastic, conversational prose style that captures Colbert’s gratitude for life: “I was one happy kid living in poverty. I believe that real poverty is found in the lives of the rich and famous. Poverty of mind and soul.” This is a short work—fewer than 80 pages long—and as a result, Colbert doesn’t delve deeply into the details of his biography; instead, he concentrates on the relevant anecdotes that support his argument. Readers may not interpret all of the author’s close calls as life-or-death situations, but they may find that he’s surmounted enough difficulty to lend his theological leanings some weight.
A short, sweet, inspirational work for Christian readers.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-973615-01-9
Page Count: 102
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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